SIRATYST (Stuff I Read And Thought You Should Too).
STOP NORMALIZING CAPITALISM, DAMN IT!!!
UNITED SNAKES OF AMERICA IS STILL A SETTLER COLONIAL STATE & GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD. "While many flail at the branches of evil ... few strike at the root." WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT? #FREEPALESTINE #FREETHEWORLD

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/StopDivisiveAttacksPDFAs active participants in the struggle for justice for Palestinians, coming from a variety of ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds, we call for an end to internal attacks on fellow activists and organizations. These only impede the work for justice.We appreciate the important contributions to that cause made over many years by If Americans Knew, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. In that light, we are dismayed by the recent unfounded attacks on one of the top organizations working on this issue, If Americans Knew, and its dedicated leader, Alison Weir, by the leadership of Jewish Voice for Peace and the U.S. Campaign. Many of us are members of these groups and are unhappy at these significant actions made in our name but without consulting us.We recognize that important differences among these organizations exist – each has its own constituencies, approach, and style, as is the case with the scores of other organizations that together make up the solidarity movement. Some may disapprove of taking the Palestinian case to people who don't define themselves as "liberals" or "progressives." Others may disapprove of working with Zionist groups and failure to state that Zionism is racism, etc. We have no problem with any group articulating such differences and even making principled criticisms of another's work – that is part of the life of any healthy democratic movement.But we believe strongly that secret dossiers, ideological inquisitions, double standards, misrepresentations, spreading innuendo, and attempting to excommunicate groups or individuals one disagrees with from the ranks of the movement sow unnecessary divisions and distract from what must remain our primary focus: building the broad united front that's necessary to change United States policy in the Middle East and to help Palestinians obtain justice in their homeland.We also believe that the vitriolic, ADL-like accusations that Alison Weir is "anti-Semitic" and/or racist are scurrilous and without foundation. They are based on guilt-by-association arguments through which numerous committed activists – including the leadership of the US Campaign and JVP – could equally, and also incorrectly, be called "anti-Semitic" and/or racist.We are painfully aware that there are well funded opponents who spare no effort to undermine and divide this movement for justice and human rights in Palestine. We therefore expect those who sincerely share our goals to be mindful of the potential to fracture the movement and be judicious and principled in their critique of groups and individuals who make significant contributions to the movement.We call for these attacks to cease and for those initiating them to return to their main task, working for justice in Palestine.Sincerely,[The Undersigned] TO SIGN scroll down below the signatures to add your name. Full list of signatories to be added here periodically, and at http://tinyurl.com/StopDivisiveAttacksPDFMore Information:Accusations against If Americans Knew: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/accusations.htmlMessages of support for If Americans Knew:http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/accusations.html#fivehttp://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/accusations.html#sevenAnalysis of Attacks on If Americans Knew:http://louisproyect.org/2015/06/25/the-jewish-voice-for-peace-attack-on-alison-weir-jvp-loses-its-balance-2/SIGNATORIES (last updated 2.30 pm Wednesday August 19. 2015. Total number of signatories: over 1,935) identification purposes.* = US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Member Organization** = Chapter of Jewish Voice for PeaceRichard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University, and former Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine, UN Human Rights Council.Samia Khoury, founding member of the board of Trustees of Birzeit University and Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre, author, "Reflections from Palestine: A Journey of Hope" (descendant of Birzeit University founders).Ann Wright, retired US Army Colonel and former US diplomat turned peace activist; passenger on 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla; co-organizer and passenger on Gaza Freedom Flotillas 2011 & 2015; co-organizer of 2009 Gaza Freedom March.Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian Popular Resistance Movement, Nabi SalehIyad Burnat, Palestinian grassroots activist, Bil'in Popular Committee Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, Professor, Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities, Co-Founder Al-Awda-Palestine Right to Return Coalition.Hedy Epstein, Holocaust survivor; St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee*; Jewish Voice for Peace - St. Louis** , Free Gaza Movement Paul Findley, former US Congressman, Illinois, author of "They Dare to Speak Out," the first book on the Israel lobbyJames Abourezk, former Senator, South Dakota, founder of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)Pete McCloskey, former Member of Congress (R..Calif. 1967-83) and Co-Founder, with Paul Findley, of the Council for the National Interest; and Helen McCloskeyArun Gandhi, Grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi Worldwide Education InstituteDr. Khalil Nakhleh, author of "Globalized Palestine: The National Sell-Out of a Homeland"George N. Rishmawi, Director, The Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People, Beit Sahour, PalestineRay McGovern, Retired CIA officer turned peace activist. Co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.Rita Giacaman, Professor, Research & Program Coordinator and founder, Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University; active in 1980s Palestinian social action movement.John Whitbeck, Director, Council for the National InterestEdward Peck, Americans for Middle East Understanding, Former US Ambassador to Iraq & Mauritania, Participant in the 2010 Gaza Freedom FlotillaAbbas Hamideh, National Board Vice Chair, Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition, son of one of the few survivors of the massacre at Deir Yassin Palestine on April 9th 1948Philip Giraldi, Former CIA Officer turned anti-war activist & journalist; Executive Director, Council for the National Interest*, member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for SanityCindy Sheehan, anti-war activist and former presidential candidate, Cindy Sheehan's SoapboxJoe Meadors, USS Liberty Survivor, Past President, USS Liberty Veterans Association, Participant in three Gaza Freedom Flotillas, Free Palestine Movement*. The Rev. David W. Good, Minister Emeritus for The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, President: Tree of Life Educational FundJohn Erickson, NorCal Friends of Sabeel* -- Co-ChairSunaina Maira, Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Davis, USACBIThe Reverend Canon Richard K. Toll, former Director, Friends of Sabeel* , Retired Episcopal PriestDr. Samir Abed-Rabbo, Professor Emeritus of International Law, Director of the Center for Arab and Islamic StudiesDonald A. Kruse, Retired Foreign Services Officer, Consul, Consulate General, Jerusalem 1976-1980Lawrence Davidson, Professor Emeritus, West Chester UniversityElizabeth Murray, former Deputy Intellignece Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence CouncilJames Petras, Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NYJoel Kovel, author of "Overcoming Zionism," "White Racism," "Red Hunting inn the Promised Land," and other books; editor; former psychiatrist; Bard College professor emeritusErnest Gallo, President, USS Liberty Veterans AssociationRonald Kukal, USS Liberty Survivor: Petty Officer in Charge of the Body Recovery and Identification after June 8, 1967 attack David Rovics, Folk Musician, American Federation of Musicians Local 1000Mary Ratcliff, San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper - EditorAbdallah Omeish, award-winning documentary filmmaker of "Occupation 101" and "The War Around Us"Andrew Killgore, former Ambassador, publisher, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, providing facts on Palestine for over 30 years.Janet McMahon, Managing Editor, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, author, "Seeing the Light: Personal Encounters With the Middle East and Islam"Kathleen Christison, Author, "Perceptions of Palestine" and "The Wound of Dispossession"; Co-author "Palestine in Pieces"Jerry Levin, former CNN network journalist. Christian Peacemaker Teams. Writes on nonviolence. Recognized by the Dalai Lama as one of 2009's "Unsung Heroes of Compassion." TO SEE ALL SIGNATURES, PLEASE GO TO LINK AT TOP OF PAGE.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

At a meeting on Friday in Taos, New Mexico, Native American leaders weighed a handful of proposals about the future of the United State’s large, illegal European population. After a long debate, NANC decided to extend a road to citizenship for those without criminal records or contagious diseases.

“We will give Europeans the option to apply for Native Citizenship,” explained Chief Sauti of the Nez Perce tribe. “To obtain legal status, each applicant must write a heartfelt apology for their ancestors’ crimes, pay an application fee of $5,000, and, if currently on any ancestral Native land, they must relinquish that land to NANC or pay the market price, which we decide.

“Any illegal European who has a criminal record of any sort, minus traffic and parking tickets, will be deported back to their native land. Anybody with contagious diseases like HIV, smallpox, herpes, etc, will not qualify and will also be deported.”

European colonization of North America began in the 16th and 17th centuries, when arrivals from France, Spain and England first established settlements on land that had been occupied by native peoples. Explorers Lewis & Clark further opened up western lands to settlement, which ultimately led to the creation of the Indian reservation system.

Despite the large number of Europeans residing in the United States, historical scholars mostly agree that indigenous lands were taken illegally through war, genocide and forced displacement.

Despite the council’s decision, a native group called True Americans lambasted the move, claiming amnesty will only serve to reward lawbreakers.

“They all need to be deported back to Europe,” John Dakota from True Americans said. “They came here illegally and took a giant crap on our land. They brought disease and alcoholism, stole everything we have because they were too lazy to improve and develop their own countries.”

EXCERPT:"In a damning report published last year, Oxfam warned that THE WORLD'S RICHEST 85 PEOPLE SHARE A COMBINED WEALTH EQUIVALENT TO THAT OF THE POOREST 3.5 BILLION, a fact it cautioned threatens political stability and drives up social tensions. What’s more, the charity emphasised that this inequality is driven by a "power grab" by wealthy elites, who have co-opted the political process to rig the rules of the economic system in their favour. -

There are those worthy of clean water, security, health and education and those who can be sent back to death camps and war zones by virtue of their global postcode

- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/where-morality-migrant-crisis-520227141#sthash.8cEU89Un.dpuf

Saturday, August 22, 2015

I started to add the label "crooked" to the title but U.S. Senators ARE ALL CROOKED, so it wasn't needed. Thanks to the Navajo for showing the way forward -- stand up to the crooks wherever you find them!

Thursday, August 20, 2015

"The reality is that world capitalism's ruling class must propagate a racist, colonialist narrative of the oppressed in order to exploit them for profits. Profit always comes at the expense of labor, whether through the process of exploitation or the plunder necessary to establish it. Syria and Black America are thus facing down the same enemy. At the subjective level, the politicians, police, military forces, and corporate operatives forward a dehumanized narrative of both peoples to desensitize and legitimize the wanton destruction of Syria and the daily police murder of Black Americans. And at the objective level, the same trillion dollar military apparatus that Washington utilizes against Syria also militarizes the police to occupy the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore, and Black cities all over the US."

*******

When Michael Brown was murdered by the state in 2014, militarized policed rolled through the streets of Ferguson and St. Louis to contain Black resistance. On the anniversary of Mike Brown's death, the same militarized police returned and arrested 150, shot and critically injured a protester, and declared martial law. Some have said the Washington-funded militarization of the police in Ferguson and cities across the US is comparable to the military forces deployed to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. While this comparison does make a critical observation, it ultimately reinforces the idea that military occupation is not possible within the colonial borders of the US. The comparison is only relevant when it drops the narrative of American exceptionalism and analyzes the geopolitical relationship between white supremacy and the state through an internationalist perspective.

The state is the enforcement arm of white supremacy and global capitalism. It is often confused with the government, but it is much more than that. The state comprises of the police, the military, the courts, and the entire apparatus of social control that supports the exploitation of oppressed people. More concretely, the character of the state depends on the political and economic system in question. The US state is a manifestation of centuries of racist, capitalist development that began with the enslavement of Africans and extermination of indigenous peoples. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s new work, The Indigenous Peoples History of the United States, summarizes this development as follows:

“Any true history of the United States must focus on what has happened to (and with) Indigenous peoples – and what still happens. It’s not just past colonialist actions but also ‘the continued colonization of American Indian nations, peoples, and lands’ that allows the United States to ‘cast its imperialist gaze globally.’”

“Washington's rulers are dependent upon a white supremacist framework to legitimize oppression and dehumanize the oppressed, from Damascus to Baltimore.”

Ortiz's conclusion that US capitalism's global expansion couldn't have occurred without the vast riches of stolen land and labor is the material basis for white supremacy. The transformation of Black American cities into war-zones and the repression of resistance through the channels of the Mass Black Incarceration State ultimately share a common cause with the Syrian people. The war on Black America is both a necessary precondition to politically repress potentially revolutionary resistance and an economic move to incarcerate and thus control a Black labor force that can no longer be accounted for in the post-industrial capitalist wasteland of the US. Washington's war with Syria is a geopolitical maneuver to reassert dominance in a region that is increasingly becoming hostile to US interests. Washington's rulers are dependent upon a white supremacist framework to legitimize oppression and dehumanize the oppressed, from Damascus to Baltimore.

From the perspective of the imperialist ruling class, Syrian lives matter as much as Black Lives do. Black Americans and Syrians are expendable from the standpoint of the ruling system's ultimate goal of keeping the rich in power and white people compliant. Syrians will continue to be painted as incapable of managing their own affairs and in need of Western imperial medicine. Black Americans will continue to be dehumanized and criminalized as the assault on their bodies, minds, and labor continues. Black Lives Matter has continuously framed the movement against police terror as an ideological and political intervention. Another addition to the intervention that will be critical in the overall movement's growth is the development of an internationalist consciousness capable of forging relationships of solidarity with the Syrian people and all people staring down the same imperialist enemy.

In the words of Khaled Quzmar, Director of Defense of Children International-Palestine (DCI-Pal), “Israel's condemnation of this heinous act rings hollow as the state's policies have led to the climate of impunity that makes such violence possible.”

According DCI-Pal, soldier and settler violence claimed the lives of 1895 Palestinian children since 2000, yet there is not a single instance where an Israeli is currently serving time for the murder of a Palestinian child. In contrast, there are hundreds of Palestinian children who languish in Israeli jails, tortured, denied counsel, denied their parents, and placed in solitary confinement, like 16-year old Diyaa, on mere suspicion of having committed offenses.

Less than 27% of all Palestinian fatalities are investigated. Of those, approximately 90% are closed without indictment. According to DCI-Pal, there's only a 1.4% chance of indictment when Palestinian children are murdered by Israelis. Further, in the rare instances where an Israeli is brought to trial, they are almost always acquitted. In the extremely rare cases where conviction occurs, there is little or no punishment. One such rare example (the only one I'm aware of in the last 20 years) is the case of Nachum Korman, a 36-year old settler who went hunting for Palestinian children in 1996, caught 11-year old Hilmi Shusha, beat him, then pinned the boy under his boot and clubbed him to death with the butt of his rifle. The court first acquitted Korman, but after conviction in a higher court, he was sentenced to community service and ordered to pay a fine of $11,000. It took Israeli courts five years to find him guilty, but even then, he got no prison time for bludgeoning a small child to death in front of other terrified children. By way of comparison, a Palestinian man was sentenced to 18 months in prison in a criminal trial on charges of rape for having consensual sex with an Israeli woman, who felt violated after she later learned the man was Arab.

- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/brand-israel-pretends-burning-palestinian-baby-act-extremists-2060843845#sthash.hfIIeq6o.dpuf